


Blame the Banana

by orphan_account



Series: What Might Come from This [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Boners, Cuddling, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feels, Fluff, M/M, Nightmares, One Shot, Prequel, but getting caught nonetheless, getting caught doing nothing exactly, only perhaps prequel, the author makes no promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1584527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and Loki have an agreement: they both help each other with their nightmares. Cuddling helps, apparently. Getting involuntary boners doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame the Banana

**Author's Note:**

> My first actually finished and posted Frostiron fic, written during the madness of finals-preparation. Un-beta'd. This is a prequel to a longer fic you can find as Part 2 of the series this work here belongs to. [aconitine-apothecary](http://aconitine-apothecary.tumblr.com/post/84594231154/okay-so-cuddling-and-angst-and-epic-battles-are)'s post on tumblr kinda convinced me to write this thing, even though it's not exactly about the Avengers finding out about Tony and Loki. This fic is more like what happened before everything happens. (Whut.)
> 
> You might also recognise a slightly altered quote from the Avengers movie. Neither this quote nor the franchise or the characters belong to me, sadly. Also I'd like to add that I am not a native English speaker, and while I usually prefer a more British variant, I tried to go with a more American one here, at least spelling-wise.
> 
> And if you ever feel like there's no logic - that's because sometimes I lost it under a pile of notes.
> 
> Now all there is left to say is: Enjoy!

Ever since Loki had come crashing through the roof of Tony’s Malibu mansion … No, scratch that. Even before Loki had crashed at Tony’s (literally), said human had been suffering from nightmares. He was no stranger to the slow torture of the mind, his dreams hadn’t been happy since his abduction by the Ten Rings. But these new nightmares were connected to Loki, since it had been his invasion and his portal through which Tony had flown. More rational minds would conclude that Tony feared the deep darkness, silence and cold that open space constitutes, and maybe they would also assume that he hated Loki for it. For being from another world, for forcing the vast unknown onto Tony and all mankind. But actually it was all quite different.

Yes, Tony had felt fear, when the vacuum, the zero-gravity, the cold and the darkness had overwhelmed him. Yes, he still dreamed of it and woke, screaming for J.A.R.V.I.S. to reboot the suit. Yes, Pepper had left him for that – for scaring her one too many nights in a row with a summoned Iron Man suit, ready to fire and extinguish whatever caused Tony’s distress. But when he was awake, only determination, fascination and a slice of awe remained.

And _that_ was when Loki came crashing through the roof of Tony’s Malibu mansion. It didn’t end there though. For a few days after he discovered a lump of scorched leather and metal half-buried in the ground he’d dreamed of darkness again. But in the darkness there had been something, a presence, a voice yet unheard, a _gaze_. It didn’t scare him, because the eyes watching him were a stormy blue, greenish whenever magic sparked from those wicked fingers. Tony then started to regret not having called SHIELD, only because then he would have had the chance to talk to Loki. Instead, the Asgardian – no, hang on, he wasn’t, he was something else – only threw a haunted, wild look at him before disappearing.

Trying to forget the incident – and also because repairs were needed and he hated seeing workers fixing stuff in his own home – he decided to oversee the last touches to the Avengers Tower in New York instead. His own three floors that made up his living space were almost finished, only the Hall of Armors a floor below and his workshop another floor down still needed some work, so that was where he buried himself during the days, and whichever nights he couldn’t sleep due to unnamed, unspecific nightmares. He didn’t forget how Loki had looked, however. Because Tony knew nightmares and fear when he saw it. Loki had definitely looked a lot like it.

._-°-_.

The first time Tony woke up in the master bedroom in New York and a pair of stormy blue eyes gazed at him in the dark that glowed with the restless city’s lights, he didn’t even bother to scream.

“ _Sir, there seems to be an intruder_ ,” J.A.R.V.I.S.coolly commented, though maybe Tony imagined the slightly disgruntled tone. “ _Shall I contact SHIELD?_ ”

“Nah. Why didn’t you wake me before?” Tony yawned and sat, returning Loki’s stare unfazed.

“ _Mr. Loki’s magic distorted my sensors and cameras, sir._ ”

“Huh, so. Reindeer games. Office hours are between eight and five every other Thursday.”

He only received a slightly raised eyebrow as a reply.

“Well, since you’ve been so rude as to wake me from my – not much needed – beauty sleep, maybe you’d be so kind as to tell me why?”

For a second it looked like Loki would keep sitting silently and motionlessly on the floor beside Tony’s bed, but then his thin lips pursed and he breathed through the nose.

“You were about to enter a nightmare,” he said then and shifted his weight a bit.

“Ah,” Tony replied eloquently and stole a glance at J.A.R.V.I.S.’ display on his bedside drawer, to look at the time. 3:15 am. “And … how is that of your concern?”

Loki’s eyes shifted quickly from Tony’s face to the display, back again and then to his hands, lying calmly in his lap. It didn’t look quite nervous, but maybe just a bit … uncomfortable. Of course he was a villain, sitting on the floor of the bedroom of one considered a hero – in a tower full of heroes. So there was that.

“You know the impact of events on dreams,” Loki then said after a while. “I know it, too.”

Tony propped up his elbow on the pillow to be able to look at Loki more comfortably. When the God met his gaze again, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

“So what? You had pity on me and decided to pop by? How’d you escape prison, anyway? By the way, you should really stop damaging my property. I mean, a window, a floor, a ceiling … What’s next?” he joked lightly, but Loki’s frown killed the laughter in his throat.

“I apologize for that. Especially for the window, since I decided on it consciously. The floor and the ceiling however are not my doing. One was the beast, and the other … simply bad luck. And I did not escape, I was released by Thor himself. But since the Bifrost is only allowed to be activated in emergencies, I had to travel by other means. Hence the bad luck.”

“Bad luck for me, yeah. Well, not really, I can afford it, you know. Would’ve had to get a new lamp anyway, that old one started to annoy me.”

It was almost imperceptible in the dim light that the yet unshaded windows of his bedroom let in, but Tony imagined to see something more urgent than simple uneasiness in Loki’s face. It took him a minute, because usually his brain didn’t do its brilliant workings without some caffeine first, but then he realized: “You were just having a nightmare yourself, weren’t you.”

The uneasiness shifted into an angered frown, though this short burst of rage seemed to be directed at himself mostly. Loki turned his head to glare at the foot of the bed, and Tony had to fight the urge to curl his toes in. Maybe the God loathed this weakness. Maybe he loathed having come here, but now there was no elegant way out. Still, he had to ask.

“Why’d you come here, though? I’m not a therapist – in fact, as you noticed, I’d probably be in need of one just as much as you.”

“The …” Loki hesitated and licked his lips. “The threat that forced those nightmares onto my mind is much more immediate than I would like.”

“So?” Tony pressed gently, when the God fell silent again.

“So I came here to offer you a deal,” he said slowly, eyes glinting in the dark like those of a cat or a deer. A reindeer. (Haha, pun.)

Tony sat straighter in his bed and threw the blanket off his legs.

“I am listening.”

Loki took a deep breath and waited for a few moments with his eyes closed. Tony saw his fingers twitch in his lap.

“The … Chitauri. The army I led here to invade your planet. They do not serve me – they never have, not really. Their master found me adrift, among debris and emptiness, far away from Yggdrasil’s branches or the Nine Realms. On a world where no light save that of long dead stars ever touched barren stone, he found me. Centuries, millennia could have passed and I would not have known. My mind had lost its anchors, and when he offered me a beacon, I grasped it.” Loki’s pale eyes sought Tony’s then, and he nodded.

“The tesseract.”

“Her power was like a flame, and I was like a moth. It was like hunger and thirst, but more … mindless. When he told me the only way to repay my life-debt to him – while fulfilling my most primal dream at the same time – was to bring him the tesseract, I obeyed. Not realizing that I was about to burn my wings.” He took a shuddering breath. “You know what happened then. But it did not end when Thor brought me ho- … to Asgard. That was when the dreams started.”

Tony patiently waited for Loki to resume his story. He knew from personal experience that it was best not to interrupt such a story, and while he had not expected this, somehow none of it really surprised him either. They had long since figured out that Loki had not been at full capacity when he tried to invade Earth. The reason for that, however, presented himself just now.

“Even during the invasion the … the Other had means to communicate with me. But then he had the scepter to connect to me through. In Asgard’s prison there was no such thing, so at first I discarded the whispers as talk of the other prisoners. Threats of pain and punishment. Only later did they invade into my dreams as well. First as a disembodied voice, but then the Other himself appeared, more vividly than I could possibly imagine him. And he started to implement those threats onto my dream-self.” Loki visibly shuddered at that, and Tony silently regarded his face, upturned to stare at the wall just above Tony’s head. “You cannot possibly know the power of dream-walking, but for sorcerers as myself, dreams have incredible power. To be injured like that … To be killed in the most agonizing and gruesome ways that only inhuman minds can conjure … It takes a greater toll on me than it would on you. You are no creature of magic.”

And while that might be the case, Tony saw enough of the suffering on Loki’s face, in his eyes, to know the price he must have paid during those nights. Even ‘normal’ nightmares like his had a great effect on body and mind, as he knew. For weeks after New York he’d feared the dark even when awake. He’d started to avoid sleep, ate less, whenever the dreams returned. And to imagine that what Loki suffered was worse? He never once doubted his story. It was written in barely healed scars all over the God’s posture and expression that screamed of constant fear and exhaustion.

“So what do you expect from me now?” Tony said softly after a while.

“Protection,” came the swift answer. “Distraction. A place where I can build protective defenses. A place to hide and heal.”

“And what would I get in return?”

Loki’s eyes shrewdly read Tony’s face.

“Just like you will help me to fend off invasive nightmares, I will help you with yours.”

Tony hummed thoughtfully, though the offer seemed reasonable. Maybe it was reckless and stupid, but hey, when had Tony ever done something not-reckless and not-stupid? Besides, he always took it serious when something bad that had happened to him was now happening to others. There was one more thing, though.

“What about the others?”

“I will only need your protection whenever I sleep, so it should not be too difficult to evade the Avengers.”

“No, I meant …” Tony scratched his neck. “You’ll have to promise me not to hurt any civilians, SHIELD-agents, -associates or any friends of mine or my teammates’. Whatever you do during the day is not my business, as long as you keep to being neutral, if not friendly to Earth’s inhabitants.”

Loki nodded after only a second of consideration.

“So we are doing this,” Tony murmured.

“It seems that way,” Loki agreed and stood, though when he sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling off his boots, Tony protested loudly.

“Whoa, whoa, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Settling for the night, of course. As per our new agreement.”

“What, here?”

“Naturally,” Loki said.

“Naturally,” Tony echoed, at a loss, and Loki sighed.

“It seems I was not clear enough. Touch, scent, warmth and another person’s mind in the immediate vicinity can dampen if not entirely deflect invasive dream-magic. You will provide me with those means. Also you are resourceful and dangerous enough to scare off other possible, more physical threats to myself.” Loki’s expression was that of kind patience one usually wore when talking to children or really stupid people.

“So, you’ll be what … sleeping in my bed for … how long exactly?”

“It should not take more than two months for me to build magical barriers that will prevent the Other from entering my mind.”

“Okay …” Tony perplexedly watched as Loki prepared himself for sleep. Boots, cape, overcoat, belt and vest were neatly folded and stacked at the foot of the bed. “J.A.R.V.I.S, change Loki’s categorization from enemy to neutral for now.”

“ _Done, sir_.”

Loki carefully climbed on the bed then, curiously testing the soft mattress that dipped considerably under his weight. Tony even heard the bed frame groan, despite him having strengthened it (for entirely different, non-alien reasons though).

“Uh, how heavy are you?” he asked cautiously. Loki stared at where Tony rested for a moment and then suddenly reached out to grab his wrist. “Hey!”

“Hold still, I am trying to measure your tissue density.”

What?

Loki hummed and let go of Tony’s arm again, whispering something under his breath. And just like that the mattress flattened out a bit.

“Wait, did you just … control your weight? Man, Pepper would love that spell. Not that she’d ever need it, y’know, but …”

The God only blinked and carefully arranged the pillows that Tony didn’t use to a proper mountain. He then curled in on himself, leaned against the cushion-mountain and drew the sheets over his legs.

“Please do not stare at me like this,” he said then.

“Sorry, I’m just …” He didn’t even know how to end this sentence. He’d just agreed to letting a homicidal, villainous, alien God sleep in his bed. For _weeks_. He’d never had anyone in his bed who wasn’t there for romantic/erotic reasons. Even Pepper belonged in that category.

“Sleep now. Should you notice me having a nightmare, try to wake me – though it would be advisable to proceed with caution. I might lash out,” Loki murmured, eyes already closed. “I will do you the same favor.”

“Okay,” Tony piped, snuggled in under the sheets and then stared up at the ceiling, completely at a loss. It felt weird to face Loki, but it also seemed rude to turn his back on him. Also he just realized that he didn’t know how he usually slept. “I hope you don’t mind snoring, ‘cause I really don’t know if I do nor not.”

“If you do, I will smother you with a pillow,” Loki mumbled.

“Cool.”

Oh god. What had he gotten himself into? And even worse, he couldn’t even bring himself to mind.

What a weird night.

._-°-_.

After a few tense nights with alternately Loki waking up screaming or Tony jerking out of dreamland from having Loki’s icy toes kicked into his shin, they accepted that just sleeping in the same bed didn’t seem to be enough to stop nightmares. _Touch, scent, warmth and another person’s mind in the immediate vicinity_ , Loki had said, so they resorted to manly cuddling. And voila, the first night they slept back to back, neither woke the other up, and Tony felt really refreshed.

Usually Loki disappeared right after they were both awake, but that morning he just kind of burrowed himself into his pillow-mountain and refused to move.

“Hey, want some breakfast?”

When Loki blearily blinked at him from under tousled hair, he just took it as an affirmative and went off in search of food, coffee and the Holy Grail. At least two of these he found, but he still felt very chivalric as he balanced a tablet with toast, pancakes, fruit, coffee and juice on his hands and presented it to Loki, who peeked at him from his pillow-fortress.

“Cheer up, my antlered friend: I present you with the water of life, aka coffee. Ever tried some?”

It took Tony five tries until he could persuade Loki into liking it. Apparently he had a sweet tooth, because he was currently sipping at a cup with a drop of milk and four sugar cubes in it. Also the God seemed to prefer fruit to bakery.

“Tomorrow I’ll have to order more fruit – a whole variety for you to sample. I bet you wouldn’t even know half the fruit Earth has to offer,” Tony babbled around a bite of toast. He went on about how Pepper and Steve continuously tried to persuade him into eating healthier, when he suddenly noticed Loki staring at him silently.

“Okay, that’s creepy. What’s up, Merlin?”

Loki chewed on a bite of banana – which Tony hadn’t actively realized he’d peeled for the God, but now he remembered – before answering quietly: “I would like to sample more fruit tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Tony said and continued his rant about health, vitamins and how annoying it was to be mothered by a national icon.

._-°-_.

Having breakfast together became a pleasant routine. Before this, Tony had never actually had something like a sleep pattern or eaten regularly. And he wasn’t the only one noticing it. Steve was the first to compliment him on looking ‘really well rested’. Next came Bruce, who suggested more exotic fruit when Tony asked. No one really suspected anything, not Loki-related anyway, and everything would have been cool and fun … If Tony hadn’t woken up one morning, lying on his wrong side, snuggled up against Loki’s back and feeling a very, very unmistakable morning wood straining in his pajamas.

He sent a silent prayer to whatever god was willing to listen – just not the one lying in front of him, please – that Loki was still sleeping, and clumsily shuffled away. But even with some distance now between them, he couldn’t just lie here and wait for Loki to wake up, because he was quite sure that his erection would still be there. He silently calculated risks, pros and cons, before cursing under his breath and slipping off the bed as smoothly as possible. Standing, the tent in his trousers was even more prominent than it had felt lying down. Damn.

He quickly buzzed off into the adjourning bathroom and hoped Loki hadn’t noticed anything. Morning glory didn’t have anything to do with sexual arousal, _he_ knew that, but maybe Norse space Vikings didn’t, and he didn’t want Loki to get wrong ideas.

“Stark?”

Shit, busted.

“Uh, morning,” he replied through the door.

“Fair morning to you too, _Man of Iron_ ,” Loki mocked with a chuckle. “For indeed I cannot deny neither your manliness nor your iron-like properties.”

“Ha-ha. Now let me pee in peace.”

“Ah, there is no need to be ashamed. I know full well the arousing effect of my body. You would not be the first to react to it in this way.”

“But I’m not!” he protested, awkwardly standing in front of the toilet and staring down at it, as if its waters held true knowledge. “It’s common knowledge that morning wood can come from a full bladder.”

Loki merely hummed in a tone that said he didn’t believe a word.

“Oh, _come on_.”

“So you claim that you are not attracted to my body at all?”

“Yup, that’s what I’m saying.”

There was a short pause from Loki’s end, while Tony struggled to actually pee. His erection still mostly hindered that, though.

“Prove it,” Loki suddenly said, and his voice sounded way too close. When Tony turned, he was confronted with the sight of a stark naked (oh god, pun, not funny) Norse God of definitely Mischief, because that grin could only be described as mischievous and utterly naughty. And he was also definitely showing off, when he yawned and stretched deliciously, displaying the ripples of muscle under unblemished, creamy white skin. Not to forget those mile-long legs and, uh, firm buttocks. Also – not that Tony actively looked, but hey – he was very … ahem, well-endowed. (So Jane hadn’t kidded him when she told him about the size of Thor’s … hammer.)

“I am going to take a shower now,” Loki drawled, “and if your manhood remains erect until then, I win and you will admit to being attracted to me. If you can finish urinating, you win and I will forget this little incident.”

Before Tony could either agree or protest, the water was already running and Loki was washing himself, unperturbed by Tony’s presence. Okay, this was not fair at all, because that little shit was _touching_ himself, like he was about to jerk off right in front of Tony – he hadn’t even bothered with sliding the glass door shut. Again and again his hands wandered to rub a nipple, grip his cock or tease the entrance hidden between his ass cheeks. And he was clearly enjoying himself, because Tony could hear his little moans and breaths even over the noise of the water; also his cock was undoubtedly hardening under Tony’s gaze.

“Shit,” Tony cursed when he realized that Loki was already rinsing out his hair and his own dick was still hard enough to hold a towel. That his hand still held it from his previous attempts at peeing didn’t help either. After a few seconds his whole brain just went _what the hell_ and he sat on the toilet seat, spat on his palm and started to properly pump his cock. Pleasure surged through his body and made his muscles go slack, but he managed a satisfied grin when he saw Loki staring mesmerized at his moving hand.

“Like what you see?” he rasped, and the wicked grin returned to Loki’s mouth.

"Would you like to join me, Stark?" the God offered coyly, and hey, who was Tony to deny a God?

._-°-_.

Apart from breakfast-after awkwardness and the addition of some more carnal activities, nothing really seemed to change between Tony and Loki, until one morning they were eating lychee and bananas (Loki had a thing for them) and suddenly the door to Tony’s bedroom burst open.

“Morning! I just wanted to talk to you ab- …”

Tony, who had been sitting with his back to the door, craned his neck and saw Steve standing there, awkwardly holding a bowl of fruit. The expression on the Captain’s face could only be described as pure shock and betrayal. Well, Tony didn’t feel much different.

“Hi, Steve,” he said with false confidence and threw a quick glance at Loki, who had frozen mid-bite into a banana. It looked utterly and completely compromising, especially when Tony’s dirty mind provided him with a memory of Loki in a similar position just two days prior – only the banana hadn’t been a banana then. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Tony, are you sleeping with Loki?”

“Uh, um, please define ‘sleeping’?”

“This isn’t funny!” Rogers blurted out and pointed at an accusing finger at Tony.

“No, I know.” And then addressed to Loki: “Please put that banana away, it’s not helping.”

Loki let out a displeased mewl and pulled the banana out of his mouth, of course all the while managing to enforce rather than destroy the image burning in Tony’s head. And the image wasn’t the only thing burning either. Damn.

“How long has this been going on?” Steve asked angrily, but then shook his head. “No, you know what? We’ll have this conversation in five minutes, with all the Avengers around one table. Loki will be there too.”

And then he was gone, together with the bowl of fruit.

“Well, that was awkward.” Tony scratched his neck and turned to look at Loki.

“What will you tell them?” the God asked calmly and stared at the half-eaten banana, as if it held all the answers. Tony knew this expression, that false nothingness. If he had learned anything about Loki over the past few weeks, then that Loki never felt nothing. He always felt a damn lot, and sometimes it was even too much. So Tony decided to go the way that he hoped was best for him.

“The truth. They’ll have to understand.”

“No, they do not,” Loki disagreed, mouth tilting in a barely held back snarl. “They do not have to and they will not understand. It would be best if I left now, never to return.”

“Oh, hell no!” Tony shouted and lunged forth to grab Loki’s upper arms. When the God jerked back, he lowered his voice, but didn’t soften his grip. “Loki, look at me. Look me in the eyes. You’re the God of Lies, you can tell that I’m telling the truth. I stand with you. Okay? I’ll persuade them. We’ll explain them. And we’ll make them listen. Just … Just promise me that you won’t simply disappear. You owe me that.”

“I owe you nothing, _mortal_ ,” Loki snarled, and suddenly Tony asked himself whether the last few weeks had been a dream or a lie or both.

“Don’t”, he said weakly, but Loki was far stronger than him, even when he wore his Iron Man suit. It was no problem for him to shrug Tony’s hands off and disappear into thin air with a blink.

But the look of betrayal and hurt stayed behind, edged into Tony’s mind.

._-°-_.

“You scared him away.”

Steve crossed his arms and sighed in frustration. Clint, Natasha and Bruce only watched them with marble faces.

“Tony, he could have hurt you, I only wanted to- …”

“You don’t understand, he was _good_ with me. He was fine, he was fun.I helped him, he helped me, he sleeps on like ten pillows, he’s not a morning person and he likes fruit. We had an agreement, and it worked just fine – until you came literally stomping all over the place, scaring him off and now asking me to justify myself? You goddamn hypocrite, I had become friends with Loki, but if he’s going on a rampage now, then it’s on _your_ head, Captain.” Tony took a deep breath then, trying to see clear, but in between the disappointment he’d felt after Loki just left – it was just disappointment, nothing more – and the anger about the injustice of this almost trial-like conversation, he just couldn’t hold back anymore, if he ever could. “And you,” he pointed at Clint, “got anything more to say? How disappointed you are in me? How I could dare befriend the guy who mind-controlled you? And you,” he said to Natasha, “will you reprimand me for being compromised? For being weak? Or will you, Bruce, stop being my science bro because I held hands with Loki?”

When no response came from any of them, something in his chest exploded, and for a second he almost hoped it was the arc-reactor, because of the _shame_. He’d never wanted to hurt his friends with this – whatever it was between him and Loki. But the way they were looking at him now, it just _hurt_.

“Oh, I see,” he snorted and already turned to leave, to go somewhere, far away from New York or Malibu, because both places now remembered him of Loki. But then a small hand held him back.

“Tony,” Natasha said, her deep voice clear and soothing. “Everything you said is true – we both know that. You took a great risk with Loki, and we are just afraid for you … Because you are our friend.”

“Yeah, but it was worth it,” Tony managed to gasp out around the tears that suddenly pressed on his voice. “Every goddamn second of it.”

Natasha framed his face with her hands, so small and delicate, yet so strong and dangerous. He met her gaze and let her look into his eyes. He knew she could see the truth there, even though he himself couldn’t see it yet, couldn’t acknowledge it. That he felt more for Loki than he would for a friend.

“Why don’t we ask Thor if he can help us find Loki for you?” she said after a while, a half-smile on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review and tell me what you think :) I feel like there are 1000 things left unaddressed that should be addressed, and like a million plot holes. Everything happened so fast.
> 
> You can also find my fandom/fanfic stuff on tumblr as llaevateinn, or for my original writing on torntogether-author.tumblr.com!


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